My pet peeve ‘potholes’

Sunday

Feb 10, 2019 at 12:01 AM

“Fiddle-dee-dee! That was a big one!”

My right front tire crunched into a pothole that had been cleverly disguised by Mother Nature. It had rained all day and the water had pooled into and filled the hole … nay, cavern … so I never saw it. For a moment, I thought my tire would pop like an over-ripe grape, but it held.

I exhaled a relieved gasp of breath coupled with an almost simultaneous grumble:

“Bet I’ll need another front-end alignment, though!”

Thanks to too much rain (and December’s big snow) playing havoc with pavement, I had been dodging potholes all week on Old Lexington Road, Old Farmer Road, U.S. 64 and my usual routes. I had become quite adept at avoiding the worst of them, swerving here and there, like the protagonist in a new video game … until that last bottomless pit of a fissure.

Grrrrr!

I’m not the only one griping about the state of the roadways; at least once a week a lady calls me to complain about N.C. 49 and the series of “pock” holes going south. Another gentleman bent my ear about the condition of city streets, demanding to know what I (or the paper) was going to do about it. I resisted the urge to tell him I’d put my hardhat on and get right out there with a shovel.

Instead, I’m writing this column: Here’s hoping someone is reading and road crews will be out soon patching up this obstacle course we call our highways.

Then I can drive in peace. After all, I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.

***

Sorry, I couldn’t resist throwing in a little Robert Frost and Scarlett O’Hara.

Why?

Because I can.

On New Year’s Day, Frost’s beloved poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” with those classic “miles to go before I sleep” lines entered the public domain, meaning you, me and Park Avenue can reproduce it without permission or restriction.

Right behind Frost’s poem are many more works that will soon have no copyright protection — among them “Gone with the Wind,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”

I shudder to think what Park Avenue will do with those.

One of my pet peeves is commercials that use classic songs to sell their products. When we kids held our lighters aloft to Led Zep’s defiant, free-wheeling “Rock and Roll” anthem could we imagine it would be used to promote luxury vehicles? Barry White’s soundtrack of love, “You’re the First, the Last, You’re My Everything,” loses something when soda is the object of affection, and were the Zombies really referring to investments when they whispered “give it to me easy” in “Time of the Season”?

Imagine what they’ll do with Frost’s poem or Margaret Mitchell’s fiery heroine.

Yes, Scarlett, I know tomorrow is another day, but does it have to be another coffee mug slogan, too?

***

And speaking of commercials, was that not the very worst Super Bowl ever?

I sat there waiting to laugh out loud like I did at a sheepish Troy Polamalu admitting, under an impossible shock of hair, that he had indeed used Head and Shoulders, or the “Bud” “weis” “er” singing frogs or the Doritos screaming goat. Instead, we got creepy Andy Warhol pouring ketchup for no apparent reason, silly robots, the Hyundai’s moderately funny elevator of hell (OK, beetloaf was worth a chuckle) that angered vegans and the tedious Bud Light “corn”troversy that angered farmers.

As a nation, I really think we’ve lost our sense of humor, precisely because everyone gets offended at everything so let’s be as bland as possible.

Well, congratulations, you succeeded.

And then there was the most shocking moment of Super Bowl LIII when the Bud Knight is killed in a joust with the Mountain from “Game of Thrones” and one of Daenerys’ dragons burns the crowd to a crisp.

Frankly, I did cheer when I saw the dragon because it reminded me, as the ad intended, that my “Games” fix is right around the corner.

And since I started this column with a gripe about dodging potholes, I’ll end it with another. This one is directed at Dish Network. Resolve your silly spat with AT&T and return the HBO channels to our lineup. The final season of “Game of Thrones” is only weeks away.

If you don’t fix this “pothole,” I’ll detour to another provider. I can promise you I won’t be the only one.

* Annette Jordan is the editor of The Courier-Tribune. Contact: 626-6115 or ajordan@courier-tribune.com.

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